The Chinese state media has announced that its country has now surpassed the United States as the world’s number one Internet-using population.

The last numbers available to Reuters, at the end of February, showed that China had 221 million Internet-users, a measly 5 million behind the US.

“Despite a rapidly increasing Internet population, the proportion of Internet users among the total population was still lower than the global average level,” the Xinhua news agency said, quoting the Information Ministry.

Despite the massive number of Internet users, the proportion was only 16 percent at the end of the 2007, compared to 19 percent for the world average. The US for example, has a proportion of over 70 percent.

China has the fastest growing population of Internet users however and BDA China, a Beijing-based research firm, added that it expects China to hit 280 million Internet users by the end of the year.

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Spammers will use the upcoming US elections as a means to increase spam volumes, security firm BitDefender has warned.

Election motivated content and the names of popular candidates including Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain are set to be exploited.

“As we move forward towards the election we’re going to see an increase volume of spam with this sort of content,” Mihai Rusescu, business unit manager EMEA & APAC Business Unit at BitDefender told SC.

Mihai added that image spam volumes will continue to grow while text based spam, often fought off by spam filters, will reduce.

Meanwhile, we’re going to see new viruses aimed at mobile computing as usage of Windows Mobile increases.

“Most manufacturers are embracing the new Windows Mobile operating system, which is using the same core technology as Windows,” said Rusescu.

“Unfortunately it has some gaps and security holes that bad people are trying to take advantage of,” he added.

In terms of PC malware, new aggressive strains will continue coming into the market and cybercriminals will also try to exploit the browser, said Rusescu.

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Alcatel-Lucent has begun court proceedings for its lawsuit against Microsoft, complaining that Microsoft’s Xbox game systems violates one of the company’s 1993 patents “relating to the code for generating video frames.”

The partnership says it plans to demand $1.50 USD for “every alleged misuse of the patent” but it is not clear what is considered a misuse. At worst, the suit could apply to all Xboxs and Xbox 360s ever sold.

Microsoft has so far disputed the claims and also says “that four fifths of the claim applies to video frames in Windows Media Player, which is available as a separate, free download and so wouldn’t generate royalties for Alcatel-Lucent.”

Alcatel-Lucent began its set of lawsuits in 2002 but had them split up and separated by technologies. In 2003, the company won a $1.5 billion USD verdict from MP3 audio patents but the verdict was overturned this year. Earlier this month however, the company won $368 million USD from Microsoft over patents relating to touchscreen technology.

In response to the suits, Microsoft has filed a countersuit accusing Alcatel-Lucent “of violating nine patents relating to interfaces and messages on both computers and fax machines.”

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After having exited the travel business once before by spinning off Expedia, the Redmond company appears to stepping back in by scooping up a Washington-based startup.

Farecast is not exactly like Expedia, or other travel sites for that matter. Instead it essentially provides forecasts of whether fares would rise or fall on a specific route. From there, it provides a recommendation of whether to buy the ticket now or wait.

Microsoft had already been working with the site, having signed a partnership last summer to provide its fare forecasting data on MSN Travel. Although neither side is disclosing how much the deal was worth, it is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $115 million.”We’re excited to confirm that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft,” CEO Hugh Crean said. “This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers.” He said more details would be provided in the coming weeks.

A spokesperson for Microsoft also confirmed the merger. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also reported that the company had received multiple offers, and that the deal brought a five-fold return to its investors.

Expedia was spun off in 2001 to stave off antitrust concerns, among other reasons. Although the company did link into the travel site’s catalog for quite a few years, and still does rather prominently through its MSN Travel site, that partnership has faded away somewhat.

It is not immediately clear how the Farecast buy would change MSN’s travel services, if at all.

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The Ubuntu team announced today the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) on desktop and server. Codenamed “Hardy Heron”, 8.04 LTS integrates the latest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

The release candidate is complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition features incremental improvements to familiar applications, with an emphasis on stability for this second Ubuntu long-term support release, and is easier to try out with the new Wubi installer.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 7.10 with even more virtualization support and security enhancements - enabling AppArmor for more applications by default, improving protection of kernel memory against attacks, and supporting KVM and iSCSI technologies out of the box.

The Ubuntu 8.04 LTS family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu, also reach RC status today.

The final release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is scheduled for 24 April 2008 and will be supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

Desktop Features
—————-
Improved application selection: the GNOME desktop sports a number of improvements to the default applications, including more feature-full clients for BitTorrent and VNC, as well as an advanced UI for mastering CDs and DVDs.

File browsing: an enhanced filesystem layer brings greater performance and flexibility to Nautilus, the GNOME file browser.

Pluggable audio and video output: the PulseAudio sound server is integrated in the GNOME desktop for more flexible sound output, and a new Screen Resolution utility allows easier configuration of multiple video displays.

Wubi installer: a new Windows-based installer option makes it easier to try out Ubuntu, letting users install a full desktop on Windows systems without needing to partition their hard drive.

Server Features
—————
AppArmor profiles: a greater number of server applications are now protected by default with AppArmor, a kernel technology that limits the resources an application is allowed to access, providing added protection against undiscovered security vulnerabilities.

Memory protection: additional protection now prevents direct access to system memory through /dev/mem and /dev/kmem, and the lower 64K of system memory is no longer addressable by default, changes which help to defend against malicious code. The kernel now also loads Position Independent
Executables at randomized addresses, making it harder for application security vulnerabilities to be exploited.

Virtualization and iSCSI: KVM is now an officially maintained option, which combined with libvirt (CLI) and virt-manager (GUI) management tools allows for a simple and efficient virtualization option on hardware that supports virtualization extensions (AMD-V or Intel-VT). Mounting iSCSI targets is
now supported (including in the installer), allowing Ubuntu to interoperate with this class of cost-efficient Storage Area Network solutions.

Ubuntu Education Edition
————————
Add-on configuration: Edubuntu is now provided as an add-on to Ubuntu rather than a separate stand-alone flavor, permitting even greater reuse of Ubuntu technologies.

Kubuntu Features
—————-
Kubuntu comes with the rock solid KDE 3 for those who want a commercially supported desktop.

For those who want something more exciting, a KDE 4 Remix is available bringing this cutting edge new version to you first.

Please see https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/RC/Kubuntu for details.

Xubuntu Features
—————-
Xubuntu comes with the light-weight Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment for those who want to a desktop that is easy to use, but places particular emphasis on conserving system resources.

New Additions To The Family
—————————
Two new variants joins in for this Ubuntu release. UbuntuStudio and Mythbuntu have done releases separately in the past, and with Hardy Heron we’re happy to be able to welcome these fine community projects into the main Ubuntu release process.

For a more in-depth tour of the features new in 8.04 LTS, see http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/804rc

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YouTube says it is changing the way it deals with users who violate its community guidelines.

The video sharing site says it will no longer treat users “who uploads three videos that violate the Community Guidelines over the span of a year the same as someone who uploads those same videos over the course of a week.”

YouTube says its new policy will lift penalties against users who violated its terms of use after six months and that “Accounts that had one or two warnings (as of April 16, 2008) for Community Guidelines (or Terms of Use) violations have been given a clean slate.” The new rules do not apply to copyright violations, which do not expire.

The company said it will still send users who violate its terms of use email notifications but will also display the notice on YouTube the next time they access the site. YouTube says that is due to notifications getting caught in spam filters or going unread.

YouTube is also experimenting with the way it handles users who violate its community guidelines. “What we’ve come up with is to temporarily mute users, so that they can still use the site and watch videos, but they can’t post new content.”

“Right now it is set up to affect users who have two Community Guidelines warnings in a six-month period and will last two weeks.”

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Skype’s not doing too badly these days. As it stands, though, Skype has little to do with eBay’s core business, and so it may get sold in the relatively near future.

“What we’re testing this year are the synergies,” said John Donahoe, eBay’s new CEO, to the Financial Times. “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.”

This decision is interesting, to say the least; after many, many problems, Skype’s revenue has shot up, and its user base is huge. John Oates observed that eBay appears to be “[i]mplementing [a] buy high, sell low strategy.”

eBay itself, in contrast to Skype, is still having some problems following its fee adjustments, and a decision to limit payment options in Australia has set off a fresh round of protests (in addition to an investigation).

It’s difficult to guess whether Donahoe is following some long-decided plan of action, or is just trying to make an impact as a new leader. Either way, all business considerations aside, he loses points for using the “Office Space”-style word “synergies.”

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BEA’s new AquaLogic User Interaction (UI) 6.5 will give enterprise staff the type of collaboration tools which they now take for granted as consumers, such as status updates, said Martin Percival, senior technical evangelist for BEA.

The new release of AquaLogic Interaction allows users to produce individual profile pages.

“In the outside world, people are always updating their status on networking sites but they don’t think to do such things with their colleagues, and try and work out where they are in the enterprise,” said Percival.

“There is an interest on how fellow colleagues are getting on with materials and whether they have updated recent project plans,” he added. “The only other way to keep updating people is through email and people receive a staggering amount of email.”

AquaLogic UI 6.5 will allow firms to use RSS feeds and crawlers, enabling users to import content into a knowledge management framework. “The core offering is the portal is plugged into a collaboration tool, which allows you to publish tools and then use RSS to ship them out into, say, a Microsoft Office Page, so you are not locked into the portal itself,” said Percival.

The new release contains updates to AquaLogic Interaction, AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration, and AquaLogic Analytics.

Meanwhile, Percival said, there should be a final approval from the European Commission for the proposed acquisition by Oracle in “four to five weeks”.

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Mixing technical concerns with a truckload of business issues, Red Hat has stealthily acknowledged slipping its deadline for Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD), which might have given it an edge against Novell’s competing SuSE Linux.

Unlike the existing Red Hat Enterprise Desktop (RHED), the planned RHGD is aimed exclusively at small, reseller supplied implementations in emerging geographic areas such as Brazil, China, and India. Red Hat also sponsors a community project called Fedora, which develops and maintains a free desktop product.

But RHED and the forthcoming RHGD are both commercial products geared to businesses.First announced at the 2007 Summit users conference, RHGD was then expected to ship a few months later.

“The technology side of the product is complete,” according to a blog posting which slid quietly on to Red Hat’s Web site this week.

“[But] there have been a number of business issues that have conspired to delay the product for almost a year,” interjected the anonymous blogger, about midway through a more generic update on “What’s Going On With Red Hat Desktop Systems?”

Indeed, some of the contributing factors listed in Red Hat’s blog are unarguably business-related, including market changes and “start-up delays with resellers.” RHGD, by the way, is supposed to be supplied by Intel channel partners in these emerging markets.

Others reasons mentioned, though, lean to the technical side, including hardware changes, “multimedia codec licensing knotholes,” and “getting the design and delivery of appropriate services nailed down.”

The blogger also talks cryptically of “technical developments that have become available over the past year or two and are accelerating the spread of the Linux desktop.”

Regardless of the exact reasons for the delay, though, it’s certainly in Red Hat’s best interests to get the product out the door — and into the hands of businesses in emerging markets — as soon as possible.

Like Fedora, many other Linux desktop offerings are freely available over the Web. In the commercial market, however, Novell is Red Hat’s chief competitor. But although Red Hat is the largest selling commercial Linux vendor in North America, Novell’s SuSE is still more popular in Europe, where desktop Linux is gaining faster business acceptance.

The emerging markets targeted for RHGD could bring great opportunities for Red Hat to get its foot in the door for both the desktop and server sides.

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